11.21.08
Gaza blockade
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CounterPunch November 17, 2008
“They Are All Hamas”
The Real Goal of Israel’s Blockade of Gaza
By Jonathan Cook
The latest tightening of Israels chokehold on Gaza ending all supplies
into the Strip for more than a week has produced immediate and
shocking consequences for Gazas 1.5 million inhabitants.
The refusal to allow in fuel has forced the shutting down of Gazas
only power station, creating a blackout that pushed Palestinians
bearing candles on to the streets in protest last week. A water and
sanitation crisis are expected to follow.
And on Thursday, the United Nations announced it had run out of the
food essentials it supplies to 750,000 desperately needy Gazans. This
has become a blockade against the United Nations itself, a spokesman
said.
In a further blow, Israels large Bank Hapoalim said it would refuse
all transactions with Gaza by the end of the month, effectively
imposing a financial blockade on an economy dependent on the Israeli
shekel. Other banks are planning to follow suit, forced into a corner
by Israels declaration in Sept 2007 of Gaza as an enemy entity.
There are likely to be few witnesses to Gazas descent into a dark and
hungry winter. In the past week, all journalists were refused access
to Gaza, as were a group of senior European diplomats. Days earlier,
dozens of academics and doctors due to attend a conference to assess
the damage done to Gazans mental health were also turned back.
Israel has blamed the latest restrictions of aid and fuel to Gaza on
Hamass violation of a five-month ceasefire by launching rockets out of
the Strip. But Israel had a hand in shattering the agreement: as the
world was distracted by the US presidential elections, the army
invaded Gaza, killing six Palestinians and provoking the rocket fire.
The humanitarian catastrophe gripping Gaza is largely unrelated to the
latest tit-for-tat strikes between Hamas and Israel. Nearly a year
ago, Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the UNs refugee
agency, warned: Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first
territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject
destitution.
She blamed Gazas strangulation directly on Israel, but also cited the
international community as accomplice. Together they began blocking
aid in early 2006, following the election of Hamas to head the
Palestinian Authority (PA).
The US and Europe agreed to the measure on the principle that it would
force the people of Gaza to rethink their support for Hamas. The logic
was supposedly similar to the one that drove the sanctions applied to
Iraq under Saddam Hussein through the 1990s: if Gazas civilians
suffered enough, they would rise up against Hamas and install new
leaders acceptable to Israel and the West.
As Ms AbuZayd said, that moment marked the beginning of the
international communitys complicity in a policy of collective
punishment of Gaza, despite the fact that the Fourth Geneva Convention
classifies such treatment of civilians as a war crime.
The blockade has been pursued relentlessly since, even if the desired
outcome has been no more achieved in Gaza than it was in Iraq.
Instead, Hamas entrenched its control and cemented the Strips physical
separation from the Fatah-dominated West Bank.
Far from reconsidering its policy, Israels leadership has responded by
turning the screw ever tighter to the point where Gazan society is now
on the verge of collapse.
In truth, however, the growing catastrophe being unleashed on Gaza is
only indirectly related to Hamass rise to power and the rocket
attacks.
Of more concern to Israel is what each of these developments
represents: a refusal on the part of Gazans to abandon their
resistance to Israels continuing occupation. Both provide Israel with
a pretext for casting aside the protections offered to Gazas civilians
under international law to make them submit.
With embarrassing timing, the Israeli media revealed at the weekend
that one of the first acts of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister
elected in 2006, was to send a message to the Bush White House
offering a long-term truce in return for an end to Israeli occupation.
His offer was not even acknowledged.
Instead, according to the daily Jerusalem Post, Israeli policymakers
have sought to reinforce the impression that it would be pointless for
Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas. On
this thinking, collective punishment is warranted because there are no
true civilians in Gaza. Israel is at war with every single man, woman
and child.
In an indication of how widely this view is shared, the cabinet
discussed last week a new strategy to obliterate Gazan villages in an
attempt to stop the rocket launches, in an echo of discredited Israeli
tactics used in south Lebanon in its war of 2006. The inhabitants
would be given warning before indiscriminate shelling began.
In fact, Israels desire to seal off Gaza and terrorise its civilian
population predates even Hamass election victory. It can be dated to
Ariel Sharons disengagement of summer 2005, when Fatahs rule of the PA
was unchallenged.
An indication of the kind of isolation Mr Sharon preferred for Gaza
was revealed shortly after the pull-out, in Dec 2005, when his
officials first proposed cutting off electricity to the Strip.
The policy was not implemented, the local media pointed out at the
time, both because officials suspected the violation of international
law would be rejected by other nations and because it was feared that
such a move would damage Fatahs chances of winning the elections the
following month.
With the vote over, however, Israel had the excuse it needed to begin
severing its responsibility for the civilian population. It recast its
relationship with Gaza from one of occupation to one of hostile
parties at war. A policy of collective punishment that was considered
transparently illegal in late 2005 has today become Israels standard
operating procedure.
Increasingly strident talk from officials, culminating in February in
the deputy defence minister Matan Vilnais infamous remark about
creating a shoah, or Holocaust, in Gaza, has been matched by Israeli
measures. The military bombed Gazas electricity plant in June 2006,
and has been incrementally cutting fuel supplies ever since. In
January, Mr Vilnai argued that Israel should cut off all
responsibility for Gaza and two months later Israel signed a deal with
Egypt for it to build a power station for Gaza in Sinai.
All of these moves are designed with the same purpose in mind:
persuading the world that Israels occupation of Gaza is over and that
Israel can therefore ignore the laws of occupation and use unremitting
force against Gaza.
Cabinet ministers have been queuing up to express such sentiments.
Ehud Olmert, for example, has declared that Gazans should not be
allowed to live normal lives; Avi Dichter believes punishment should
be inflicted irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians; Meir
Sheetrit has urged that Israel should decide on a neighbourhood in
Gaza and level it the policy discussed by ministers last week.
In concert, Israel has turned a relative blind eye to the growing
smuggling trade through Gazas tunnels to Egypt. Gazans material
welfare is falling more heavily on Egyptian shoulders by the day.
The question remains: what does Israel expect the response of Gazans
to be to their immiseration and ever greater insecurity in the face of
Israeli military reprisals?
Eyal Sarraj, the head of Gazas Community Mental Health Programme, said
this year that Israels long-term goal was to force Egypt to end the
controls along its short border with the Strip. Once the border was
open, he warned, Wait for the exodus.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.
His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran
and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing
Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His
website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National
(www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.